Fever (Flu) (12 page)

“It’ll be okay,” he said weakly.

She looked up, as if to say,
Do you really believe that?

She stepped back, creating space. Her eyes found his. Shaun knew that look: she wanted to tell him something important, something he may not want to hear.

“I think we should leave,” she said, “Take Jamie and head down to Daddy’s place.”

Shaun frowned.

“Please, Shaun. It’s only getting worse in the city, but the country could be safe. And Daddy is really good with this sort of thing. You know he is...”

What sort of thing?
Shaun thought.
There has never been this sort of thing!
He wanted to yell at her. Any mention of her father usually led to them rowing, but Shaun knew how comical his voice sounded when he shouted.

He still remembered the kids from school laughing when he got worked up, riled by their constant abuse and hurtful remarks. He remembered how they would gather around him, like a pack of hyenas, laughing, giggling, waiting to pounce.

Their favourite game was to point at parts of their bodies and get Shaun to say the word. ASS and TITS and COCK. He would say each word, and they would laugh and he would get satisfaction from their laughs, a feeling of inclusion. He remembered feeling angry with his mother for chasing them away and dragging him by the arm back home, like he’d done something wrong.

“I couldn’t stay with your father,” he said, signing as he talked. “Not for a day. Not even for an hour.”

Lize shook her head. “Shaun,” she said, and from the shape of her lips he knew she was almost whispering. “Do it for Jamie.”

He looked to the sink, dishes still floating around in there, unwashed. The suds frothed up like bubble bath. Sparkling, calm, serene.

He felt her hands on his face.

“Shaun. I’m frightened,” she said, and he could tell from her eyes that she meant it, that none of it was fabricated to get her own way, to win this latest fight within the constant battle they seemed to be waging with each other these days.

He pulled away from her, returned to the living room where the debate still raged on TV. A young woman was getting quite agitated, screaming as two security guards dragged her out. LAB CLOSURE SAID TO BE CONNECTED TO FLU OUTBREAK, read another news update.

Lize pursued him, wrapping herself in his embrace once more. She wasn’t for giving up. She really wanted them to leave.

Shaun sighed, planting a kiss on his wife’s forehead. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll get Jamie ready. You phone your dad and tell him we’re coming.”

***

Shaun paused by the door of Jamie’s bedroom. Their nine year old was very grown up for his age, insisting that his parents knocked before entering his room.

Shaun rapped his knuckles on the wood.

Being deaf, he’d no way of knowing whether Jamie had replied.

A few moments passed.

Shaun knocked again.

Still no answer.

Rather than burst in, Shaun left Jamie’s door, wandering into the spare room.

He found a large suitcase in the cupboard and dusted it down. The case hadn’t been used in ages.

Before Jamie had been born, he and Lize used to holiday frequently. City breaks were their favourite. A long weekend in Rome or Berlin or Amsterdam really did the trick. A meal out in some fancy restaurant with a nice bottle of wine thrown in. They did none of that anymore.

He noticed a smaller case, this one handheld. Lize had used it on her latest business trip. Shaun reached for it, thinking Jamie could use it to carry his Nintendo and books (the boy was chain-reading teen horror titles these days; they couldn’t keep up with him).

As Shaun pulled the smaller case from the wardrobe, something fell out and tumbled to the floor. He bent to his knees and picked it up. It was a white envelope. Lize’s name was written on the front. Shaun checked the seal. It was open.

Shaun looked around seeing that Jamie’s door was still closed. He peered across the doorway, finding the stairs empty.

He reached inside the envelope and pulled a card out. On the front of the card was a picture of the Eiffel Tower. Shaun hadn’t been to Paris, and he thought the same could be said for Lize, until he opened the card and found a photo inside. It was taken in front of the tower. Lize was in it, standing beside an older man. His arms were wrapped around her. The picture looked recent.

Shaun felt his stomach churn.

He went to read the card but a tap on his arm disturbed him. Jamie looked up at him, his eyes drawn to the card in Shaun’s hands.

“What’s that?” Jamie said.

Shaun shoved the card and photo into his back pocket. “Nothing,” he said.

Jamie shrugged. “Did you need me?”

“Yes,” Shaun said, his mind still a million miles away. He reached for the smaller handheld case and handed it to Jamie. “You need to pack for a trip away.”

“Cool,” Jamie said excitedly. “Where are we going?”

“Grandpa Martin’s.”

“Oh,” Jamie said. His face dropped. “Really?”

“We have to,” Shaun said. “The countryside’s a better place to be right now. So don’t make things any difficult than they already are.”

“Okay, Dad,” Jamie said, still frowning. He picked up the case and slumped back into his room.

Shaun watched him go, then reached for the card in his back pocket, opened it and read:

Dearest Lize,

Fondest memories of a wonderful weekend in ‘Gay Paris’...

Love always,

Alan

Shaun’s eyes welled up with tears.

Jamie came out of the room. He was saying something, but Shaun couldn’t focus on it.

Shaun pushed past the boy, headed for the bathroom. Closed the door behind him and locked it.

He looked in the mirror, tried to steady himself. He blew his nose, dropped the tissue into the toilet and flushed it.
Come on
, he told himself.
Keep it together.
He looked into the mirror again, practised a smile, holding it as he reached to open the door.

He found Jamie standing on the other side of the door, like he’d been knocking.

Lize was on the stairs behind him, a worried look across her face. “What’s wrong?” she said.

“Nothing,” Shaun said, his smile still holding. “Is Jamie packed?” she asked.

Shaun looked to Jamie.

“Not yet,” the boy answered for him.

“Did you talk to Martin?” Shaun asked Lize, careful to hide his angst.

“Not yet,” she said. “Phone’s playing up. Mobile’s no better. Seems to be a common problem. It’s all over the news.”

“Try mine,” Shaun said, reaching into his back pocket. As he pulled it out, the card and photo tumbled across the floor.

All eyes stared at them.

Shaun placed his hand on Jamie’s shoulder, leading the boy back into his room. “Come on, son. Let’s get you ready,” he said.

He glared at Lize as he passed.

He could see the guilt in her eyes, and it broke his heart.

“Aunt Bell?”

Colin placed a hand on his aunt’s shoulder.

She was getting worse. Lying in bed with her hair net on and no make-up, she looked every second of her age and more. Her small body looked frail. Her skin was so hard and dry that Colin worried it might crack open.

This fucking flu...

“Peggy...?” she muttered, half awake.

“It’s me, Aunt Bell,” Colin said quietly, wiping the dried blood from her nose.

“Ah,” she said. “Did you bring the soup?”

“Soup?” he said, discarding one wet wipe and picking out another.

“Yes,” she said, her eyes opening. “I’ll have the mushroom. Always liked mushroom soup.”

A moment of lucidity seemed to flow through her as she looked at him. One bony hand moved up to touch his face. “Colin,” she said. “I’m so cold.” Her face screwed up like newspaper. Her pain was tangible.

Colin left her, moving downstairs to the phone once again. He tried the emergency helpline from the television, getting the same pre-recorded message he always got. He left his name and address on their answer machine, listening again to the first aid instructions, almost able to recite them in time with the nice English lady’s voice at the other end of the line.

Colin entered the kitchen.

He stood for a second looking around, like he’d forgotten what he was there for.

He remembered: “Soup,” he said, raising his finger in the air.

He searched each cupboard, finding teabags and sugar, tinned beans, Jammy Dodgers. But no soup.

Aunt Bell hadn’t eaten
anything
today. Colin tried to give her all the things he’d seen her eat over the years: salted porridge, well done toast with thin slices of cheese and lashings of butter, spaghetti hoops, Jammy fucking Dodgers, but she turned her nose up at them all. And now she was asking for mushroom soup, which Colin had never once seen her eat.

“Soup,” he said again, wondering if he could check to see if any of the neighbours would spare some. But most of them were gone, packing up their cars and hitting the road. Those left were bedding in, probably too scared to open their doors. Probably stocking up every last scrap of food for themselves.

Colin would have to go out.

He went back upstairs to Aunt Bell’s bedroom.

She was sleeping, the fever still damp across her brow, the hair net soaked. She was so hot that Colin could feel the heat in his own throat. The infection was radiating from her. He wanted to kiss her but stopped himself, instead kissing his fingertips and pressing them gently against her chapped lips.

He left the house.

Outside, it was quiet. Tense.

The doors and windows of most of the houses were boarded up. Colin also wanted to flee. But with Aunt Bell so unwell, he knew it was a bad idea. She needed to rest. She needed sleep and comfort. And now she needed soup.

His car, nicknamed Vince, stood solemnly in the driveway as if waiting for him, begging him to hit the open road. Colin opened the door and climbed inside. He sat for a moment, checked himself in the mirror, noticing he hadn’t combed his hair today. Must have forgotten.

“Come on...” he whispered to himself. “Get moving.” But the car remained still. Colin realised he was scared.

He picked his phone out of his pocket, called up his contacts list and hovered over the name VICKY, then, thinking again, threw the phone to the passenger seat. This was no time for weakness. He needed to be strong. He needed to be in control. He needed to be manly.

He stuck the keys in the ignition, firing up Vince and pulling out of the driveway.

Vince was a green Volkswagen Beetle. Having bought it second hand, Colin had owned the little car for almost ten years, Vince being the single constant in his life. And the Beetle was loyal to a fault. Even when Vince broke down, his sputters and squeals were tepid, as if embarrassed about falling ill. Thankfully, he was revving like a beast today.

Colin drove down the Antrim Road, towards town. The streets were so deserted that it seemed like the world had already ended and Colin somehow missed it.

He stopped just short of Belfast’s city centre, spotting a small Spar corner shop still doing business.

Colin pulled up on the pavement just outside the shop, wanting to keep Vince well within his sight. He ignored the double yellow lines roughly painted next to the pavement. A parking ticket was the least of his worries.

Colin locked Vince before walking towards the shop.

A wide-eyed young woman exited, knocking against him. Something fell out of her pocket and Colin stopped to pick it up, calling her back. It was a packet of hay fever tablets.

She turned as he called. Her red hair was almost golden in the sun.

Colin reached the tablets to her.

She grabbed the packet from him, without saying a word, before moving on.

Colin shook his head.

He opened the door and entered the shop.

Inside was a queue of people, moving all the way around the walls, stocking their wire baskets with pretty much anything they could grab.

A wiry Goth lad stood busily restocking the emptying shelves, but everyone just pushed past him, lifting goods directly from his trolley.

An older man, still wearing his Spar t-shirt, stood hunched over the only functioning till, scanning bar codes and piling the goods into bags.

A tall security guard with a perfectly pressed uniform and slickly parted hair stood by the door, holding a gun. He looked scared, displaced.

Colin joined the queue, meekly smiling at an unhappy couple at the tail end.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, noticing the message NETWORK UNAVAILABLE written across the screen. He put it away again.

He was in the queue for at least an hour, and, in that time, the wiry Goth managed to empty five trolley loads from the storeroom. Colin was counting, all the while stacking his own basket to overflow, making sure to include a six-pack of mushroom soup.

Two people were ejected from the shop.

The first one, an older man, lost his head whenever the till operator refused to take card or cheque. The customer (if you could call anyone that in this glorified bread line) tried to make a break for the door, basket in hand, shrieking like a child as the tall security guard quietly blocked his exit, calmly prised the man’s hands from the red plastic handles of the shopping basket, then pushed him out the door.

Not a single person offered to help or pay for the poor bastard’s purchases. Colin watched on with shock, but, like everyone else, did nothing.

Another customer, this one looking like a student, tried to make a grab-and-run for a packet of cigarettes. He too was evicted from the premises in the same manner, the security guard grabbing him literally by his collar and sending him on his way with a push from his size tens.

It was Colin’s turn to line up and pay the man. He made sure to have the cash ready in his hand, smiling at the morbid till operator.

Face to face, he realised the man was younger than he at first thought. His hair, thinning and combed to the side, fell against a red glowing forehead. His eyes held nothing even resembling emotion. He was lost in the till, scanning items with robot precision.